


Could Be Worse

by pocky_slash



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:00:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pamela Harding thinks that Barnard is the answer to all of her problems in Stoneybrook. Unfortunately, her biggest problem seems intent on following her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could Be Worse

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh, this was quite a ride! Thanks so much to quackerscooper for all her handholding and krabapple for giving it a fresh set of eyes. You ladies are fabulous.
> 
> Written for Sara Jaye

There's a bulletin board in the front hallway of the school, right next to the door to the main office. The top says "Bon Voyage!" in those goofy pop-out bubble letters that decorate every bulletin board in every school in the country. The rest of it is devoted to a series of note cards pinned in neat rows. Each has the name of a college on the top of it and a list of names underneath.

For weeks, Pamela's is the only name on the Barnard card.

Barnard isn't the only school she's gotten into, of course. The top drawer of her desk at home holds letters from Yale, Smith, Princeton, Williams, and Emerson, all of them acceptance, all of them offering various amounts of money in scholarship. But Barnard... Pamela fell in love with Barnard the moment she stepped on campus. It's beautiful and free and she feels at home there. She feels like she can be the person she wants to be, not the person that Stoneybrook has been shaping her into ever since second grade.

She didn't want to be a snob. She didn't want to be mean to everyone. It had become ingrained into her, though. Lash out. Look down your nose. Roll your eyes. Brag and gossip. She's been doing it since she was seven years old, since she was thrust into a new school, a new house, and a new life with no way to deal with any of it except to remind herself, over and over, that she was too cool to worry about things like that. It was a plan that mostly backfired on her.

But this is going to be her savior. She's going to go to Barnard, to New York City, and reinvent herself. She's going to be the person she wants to be instead of the person she needs to be. She's going to leave all of Stoneybrook behind.

At least, that's what she thinks until the morning she sees a second name on the card.

Karen Fucking Brewer.

She knows that Karen has gotten into half a dozen schools all over the country. Karen and Ricky, who graduated from fake husband and wife to queer theatre king and faghag somewhere around freshman year, had a friendly competition around who was applying to the most schools. Karen won, and Pamela was sure that was the end of it. She was safe.

Except now Karen's name is on the Barnard card and that has to be a mistake.

Leslie has spotted it at the same moment as Pamela.

"It just figures that she has to beat you one more time, you know?" she says. "Before you disappear from each other's lives forever, at least."

Pamela makes a tiny noise in reply, one that accurately reflects the sinking feeling overtaking her.

Terri takes a different tact, trying to be reasonable. "New York is a huge place," she says. "And Barnard does some classes with Columbia, right? What are the odds you'll even see her? What are the odds that she even chooses that school from the dozens she's been accepted to?"

Pamela gives a weak nod, but deep down inside she _knows_. She knows that Karen is going to Barnard, that she's going to have to keep seeing Karen every day, that the biggest reminder of everything that's wrong with Stoneybrook, wrong with Pamela's life in Stoneybrook, is going to be staring her in the face for the next four years.

She manages to make it to the girls' room before she starts to cry.

*

It wouldn't be so complicated if Karen weren't so damn pretty. She was cute, if a little dorky, throughout middle school, but somewhere between eighth grade and freshman year, Karen shot up three inches and filled out just as quickly. She went from being the dorky little girl with two pair of glasses and a blonde ponytail to a teenager with curves and legs that went on forever.

Coincidentally, this all happened right around the time that Pamela started to realize that maybe the reason she couldn't be bothered to have a boyfriend for the eighth grade social was because she wasn't interested in boys at all.

Terrible timing.

Pamela spent four years staring at Karen, her sworn enemy, her biggest rival, and trying not to let her body betray her. They had gym class together for three years, of course, and just a glimpse of the lace of one of Karen's bras was enough to keep Pamela distracted all through a game of kickball or softball. All through the schoolday, even, and into the night when she lay alone in her bed and wondered what it would be like to pull that bra all the way off and--

She wanted this to be a fresh start. An all-girls school, away from home, without any of her friends or schoolmates to judge her decisions. She wanted to find her own gorgeous blonde bombshell with delicate wire-rimmed glasses who was smart and successful and not actively trying to best Pamela at everything.

A fresh start. A blank slate. But instead, she's sitting on the stage on graduation day, grinding her teeth as they announce Karen Brewer, National Honors Society, International Thespian Society, Vice President of the graduating class, who will be attending Barnard in the fall.

*

Of course, things can always be worse, and Pamela thanks god for small mercies. She gets her room assignment and sees Miranda Sinclair listed as her roommate, with a home address in Morristown, New Jersey. Not Karen Brewer from Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Thank god.

She should know better than to tempt fate, though, because on move-in day, she hears a familiar voice drifting from down the hall, shouting, "Andrew! I'll unpack later! Stop going through my stuff!"

Hallmates. Not roommates, but hallmates. She sighs and goes back to her own unpacking. It could be worse, she thinks to herself. It could be worse.

*

She starts to look at it objectively. Despite living thirty-five feet from each other, Pamela never sees Karen, save for a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye when she's on the way home from her morning western civ class. Karen, she knows, has an English class about fifteen minutes after Pamela gets out and is perpetually late. That's what Pamela allows herself. Tuesdays and Thursdays she gets that flash of Karen running by on the way to class. Besides hall meetings, that's all she has to see for the first two weeks of school and she's completely, one hundred percent fine with that. She really, really is.

Which is why she doesn't let herself feel anything when Karen walks into a meeting of Q, the queer campus group, about three weeks into classes. There could be a million reasons why Karen is here. She was, after all, Ricky's heterosexual life partner for most of high school and was always bragging about the social and political causes she supported. This is probably just her latest adventure in social justice.

She raises an eyebrow when she sees Pamela, but says nothing. Pamela says nothing back. It's a delicate balance they've both been trying to keep since arriving at Barnard. Pamela had thought, at first, that Karen would go out of her way to make her life miserable, but the opposite seems to be true. Karen avoids her like the plague, gives her nothing more than a quick hello if they find themselves face to face or an awkward smile if they pass each other on campus.

It's what she wanted, after all, isn't it? And she gets her glimpse on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, just to tide her over until she has someone safer to fantasize about. It's all she needs. No sense in mooning after the straight girl.

The straight girl who just walked into the Q meeting.

On the way out at the end of the meeting, Karen smiles at her. It's a real smile, one that reaches her eyes and shows her teeth. Later that night, waiting for Miranda to leave for her evening math class seems to take forever, but the moment she's out the door, Pamela locks it, collapses onto her bed, and shoves her hand beneath her skirt, thinking about Karen in a way she's never allowed herself to think about her before.

*

The problem with crushes on straight girls is that they never make plausible fantasies. Sure, you can spend all the time you want imagining them going down on you, or kissing you, or letting you finger them, but it's never going to happen and you know it's never going to happen. It may be okay for some people, but Pamela could never divorce herself from reality well enough to let the fantasy wash over her. She could imagine straight girls (Karen) making out with men, having sex with men, and get off on that, but never on the image of a straight girl (Karen) with another girl (her). It was too far-fetched.

Or at least it was up until the moment Karen showed up at the Q meeting.

*

Over the next few weeks, things begin to change. Karen smiles at her more, says hi to her in the hallways. They don't talk, not really, not more than pleasantries, but it's more than they ever have before. Their tiny conversation while retrieving their mail ("Is that a letter from Ricky?" "Yeah, he sent me a package last week, too." "That's really nice.") is possibly the longest civil conversation they've ever had.

It's... almost sweet.

It would be sweeter if it didn't do things to Pamela, if every one of those smiles and brief discussions didn't rocket her temperature up and quicken her pulse. She learns how to get off as quietly as possible under the covers while Miranda is asleep, takes long, hot showers while everyone else is at class or out for the night. And it's Karen all the time now, of course. Her mouth, her hair, her breasts. She thinks of Karen's lowcut shirts, of the way her skirts ride up when she's running up the stairs and the way her pants slide down when she's tying her shoes. She imagines Karen's mouth and fingers, imagines digging her own fingers into Karen's long blonde hair as Karen's tongue slides into her again and again and again.

It builds, as all things do, to an aptly designated climax. It starts in a cafeteria and ends in a bedroom and leaves Pamela confused and sticky and happy and nervous and wondering what's going to come next. It leaves little purple hickeys on her neck and fingerprint bruises on her hips. It leaves her lying in bed alongside her childhood rival.

It starts, though, in a cafeteria.

*

"Is anyone sitting here?" Karen asks. Pamela looks up from her philosophy homework and blinks.

"I... no," she says. "No, it's free."

Karen smiles at her, one of those warm, happy smiles that Pamela is getting used to, and slips into the chair along with her dinner tray.

"Thanks," Karen says. She pulls out her own homework and beings to read as she slowly eats her pasta. The more she eats, though, the less Pamela pays attention to the philosophy books. Her attention moves to Karen's mouth, her lips, the way her tongue sneaks out to chase dribbles of sauce down the side of her face.

She must have been staring for a few moments, because when she starts to go back to her book, Karen reaches out and grabs her wrist.

She smiles, but it's a different kind of smile.

"Maybe we'd have an easier time reading in your room," she says, and in the split second before Pamela nods, a hot flash of anger rips through her body. Of course Karen would think it's just this easy. Of course fucking Karen Brewer would have no problem propositioning a woman--her childhood enemy of all people--in the middle of a cafeteria. Loudmouthed Karen, who always got exactly what she wanted, whether that was a fake marriage to Rickey Torres on the playground or a position on the student council.

It's only a momentary pang. Gone in an instant. Pamela nods after the split second delay, and follows Karen away from the table and back to the dorms.

As soon as the door closes behind them, as soon as Pamela is sure that Miranda has left for her evening math class, she's on top of Karen, kissing her and pressing her back, back, back onto the bed. It squeaks against the floor, but only a little, and when Karen lets out a tiny burst of nervous laughter, Pamela presses their mouths together again and swallows it.

Karen's hands are trapped between them, and Pamela rocks backwards to allow them to escape, using the same movement to straddle Karen's hips and move her own hands to the buttons on Karen's cardigan.

"Moving a little fast," Karen gasps, but her own hands are unclasping Pamela's belt as she says it.

Pamela wants to take her time. She wants to spend hours mapping out Karen's body, the curvy figure she's been dreaming of for eight years, but the same fantasies are keeping her from slowing down. She needs this _now_ , needs to taste and touch and, jesus christ, she needs to come, the sooner the better.

Karen sheds her bra, tossing it carelessly on the ground and pulling Pamela's tanktop over her head before Pamela can do more than gape. She kisses Karen again, hungrily, one hand sliding against her back, the other cupping a breast, pinching a nipple, smirking when Karen gasps breathlessly against Pamela's neck.

Pamela slides down, making certain that she rubs the length of her thigh between Karen's legs as she moves, and lowers her mouth to one hardened nipple and sucking, nipping, laving it with her tongue as Karen twists and moans beneath her, blonde hair tangled across the pillow, her nails leaving indentations on Pamela's shoulders. Pamela moves to the other breast, one hand circling lower and lower across Karen's stomach, but she hasn't yet reached her destination when Karen regains enough motor function to pull her up for a kiss.

They kiss sloppily for a few moments, almost too sloppily, almost sloppily enough to pull Pamela right out of the mood, but then it shifts into something else. It's more focused and intense, heavier, hotter, and enough for Pamela to almost forget what she was doing before.

Not quite enough, though.

While one hand is buried in Karen's hair, she allows the other to return to the fly of Karen's jeans. She manages to get it open almost before Karen notices. She feels Karen stiffen as her fingers slide past her open fly and into her panties and then Karen is moaning into her mouth again, burying her face in Pamela's neck as Pamela slips inside of her, brushing her clit ever so lightly and earning a full-body shudder for her troubles.

Karen's teeth find her neck and shoulders the faster Pamela's fingers move, and before long, Pamela finds herself kicking off her own skirt and moving further down Karen's body. She tastes warm and slightly bitter, and it's better than anything Pamela could ever have imagined. She licks hungrily, sucks at Karen's clit, and then it's over, Karen's hips bucking and twisting, Karen's fingers tight in her hair, Karen's gasps and cries muffled by her pillow.

Things get a little hazy after that, a little intense. A little more intense. Because a few moments later, Karen is conscious enough to pull Pamela's hands away from her pussy and replace them with her own. Karen's touching her, rubbing against her and coming again just as Pamela lets go and feels herself clench around Karen's fingers just as everything whites out.

*

"I should get dressed before your roommate comes back," Karen finally says. An hour has passed. Maybe more. Pamela lost track of time quite a while ago.

"Probably," she says. "She knows about the whole..." She makes a tiny gesture. "She knows I'm queer."

"Oh," Karen says, biting her lip. "Mine knows too."

They're silent for a few moments, neither making a move to leave.

"It's why I'm not friends with Nancy anymore," Karen finally says. "She figured it out a few weeks before graduation."

Pamela's eyes widen in shock, but not because of the break-up of the Three Musketeers. She's shocked because this is the most personal thing she's ever known about Karen Brewer.

Karen sits up and fishes over the side of the bed for her panties and jeans.

"So, anyway," she says. "I should go. But this was... nice."

Pamela nods and watches as she pulls on her bra and cardigan. She knows she should say something. _I've wanted you for years,_ maybe, or _I'm sorry for everything I ever said to hurt you_. But she doesn't know Karen. Not really. Not even after this. Karen was a fantasy and that was all.

 _But_ , part of her brain says quietly, _That doesn't mean she's not worth knowing._

"I study Western Civ in the courtyard on Tuesday afternoons," she says impulsively, abruptly. Karen is halfway to the door and looks shocked. "If you wanted to join me. And maybe we could... talk."

"I... okay," Karen says.

"I mean," Pamela says quickly, "I've known you for ten years but, now that I think about it, I guess I don't really know you. Except for stupid things. Like that you used to wear two different pair of glasses."

"Blue for reading and pink for everything else," they say at the same time, and after a brief, astonished pause, they both crack up.

"Sure," Karen says, still laughing. "Sure, I'd like that."

"Good," Pamela says, and when Karen slips out the door with that soft smile on her face again, Pamela smiles to herself and thinks that, yeah, it could definitely be worse.

 

 

 


End file.
